Big Veggie Trims His K Rate

With a 12-6 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals in Game Six of the NLCS, Prince Fielder may well have played his last game in Milwaukee. The 27-year-old free-agent-to-be figures to be looking for a contract that takes him into his mid-thirties and pays him upwards of $150-$200 million; Adrian Gonzalez's seven-year, $154 million pact with Boston this past April will no doubt be brought up by Fielder's agent, Scott Boras.

Fielder is fresh off arguably the best season of his career, once you account for the decline in run-scoring across the game in 2011. The Big Veggie batted .299, with a .415 on-base percentage and a .566 slugging percentage. In addition to drawing bunches of walks and working Bernie Brewer ragged on Miller Park's outfield slide, the lefty slugger cut his strikeout rate to a career-low 15.3 percent of his plate appearances, well below his 19.1 percent average from 2005-2010.

He fanned less by connecting more often on low pitches swung at with two strikes. First, here's the league average contact rate for lefty hitters with two strikes:

 League average contact rate for LHBs with two strikes

Lefty batters miss 21-22 percent of the time that they swing with two strikes. Now, here's Fielder's two-strike contact rate in 2010:

Fielder's two-strike contact rate, 2010Overall, Fielder swung and missed about 28 percent of the time with two strikes in 2010. He put the bat on the ball frequently on pitches above his considerable belt, but he swung through lots of pitches thrown at the knees. That changed in 2011, however:

Fielder's two-strike contact rate, 2011Fielder cut his two-strike miss percentage to 22 percent this past year. That helped make him one of the best two-strike hitters in the game. Prince batted .249/.347/.447 when he didn't have a strike to spare in 2011, compared to the pitcher-like .180/.247/.274 league average in such situations.

While Fielder's price tag and girth could give teams pause, he's still in the prime years of his career and enters free agency with a highly impressive hitting dossier. With a 143 career OPS+, Prince ranks in the top 50 all-time among batters through their age-27 season. If he retains his two-strike contact boost, Fielder could be even more of a threat at the plate.

Two-Strike Survivors

When a hitter gets two strikes against him, odds are he's toast. The league average Weighted On-Base Average (wOBA) with two strikes is just .236, compared to .314 overall in 2011. Put another way, a hitter turns into a Tsuyoshi Nishioka clone when in the pitcher's clutches. But some batters have managed to wiggle out of those two-strike situations pretty often. Here's a look at the 10 batters with the highest wOBAs in two-strike counts:

1. Mike Napoli, .386

2. David Ortiz, .367

3. Jose Bautista, .348

4. Miguel Cabrera, .348

5. Jacoby Ellsbury, .339

6. Marco Scutaro, .337

7. Prince Fielder, .336

8. Carlos Lee, .335

9. Troy Tulowitzki, .322

10. Curtis Granderson, .322

 Not surprisingly, the best two-strike hitters list includes some of the best hitters in the game overall. Granderson has gone deep a major league-leading 20 times in two-strike counts this season. Bautista (14), Ortiz (13), Napoli (11), Cabrera (11) and Ellsbury (10) have also hit double-digit homers with two strikes.

If there's a common thread among these guys, it's that they do a better job than most of not chasing pitches off the plate. When hitters have less than two strikes against them, they're fairly selective:

League average swing rate by pitch location with less than two strikes

Batters swing about 39 percent of the time overall with less than two strikes, chasing 22 percent of pitches out of the zone. With two strikes, however....

League average swing rate by pitch location with two strikes

..Hitters swing 61 percent of the time, including 39 percent of the time on out-of-zone pitches. But, with the exception of Fielder, our two-strike survivors have chase rates below the league average:

Napoli: 38% chase rate with 2 strikes

Ortiz: 37%

Bautista: 35%

Cabrera: 36%

Ellsbury: 25%

Scutaro: 38%

Fielder: 48%

Lee: 37%

Tulowitzki: 34%

Granderson: 40%

As is the case in other counts, it appears that one of the keys to success with two strikes is learning to lay off pitches at the eyes and the ankles. Or, be Prince Fielder. Either will work just fine.

Top Two Strike Hitters by wOBA

Min. 100 Two Strike Plate Appearances (Click image to enlarge)

There is no shortage of good hitters in the top 10 of this list.  Some notables that didn't make the cut: Chris Iannetta of the Colorado Rockies (.322) has the the highest walk rate (21.5%) of all major leaguers with two strikes....Yankees' Curtis Granderson (.316) has 5.1% HR rate, 4th behind Cabrera, Tulowitzki, and Berkman....Victor Martinez (.328) of the Detroit Tigers has a .310 batting average in two strike counts, best in the majors.